The California Wine Rush

Potentially, California has always been one of the world's greatest vineyards. The state's favorable soil and climate rival and in some ways surpass that of the wine-producing areas of France. Only in recent years, however, have California vintners been able to overcome the popular impression--once founded on fact--that most of their wines lacked the mellow appeal of Europe's output. One consequence is a splurge of expansion that has lured both big corporations and a remarkable number of individual entrepreneurs into the California wine industry.

More than 31 wineries have been started or revived within the past three years, mostly by affluent executives. For example, W.E. van Loben Sels, 52, turned over his asphalt business to his son and founded Oakville Vineyards in the Napa Valley, a prime wine area north of San Francisco. Russell Green gave up his $100,000-a-year job as president of Signal Oil & Gas Co. to buy the sleepy Simi Winery Co. in Healdsburg. Both Switzerland's Nestle and Connecticut's Heublein purchased Napa Valley wineries last year. Though it can take a decade to reap any return from new vines, Widmer's Wine Cellars of New York, now controlled by mustard-making R.T. French Co., is spending $5,000,000 to buy and clear 400 Sonoma County acres and start from scratch.

Poverty of Success. Established wine makers led the planting rush. Paul Masson, a subsidiary of Seagram's, is increasing its grape lands around Monterey by 10,000 acres, an area two-thirds the size of Manhattan. Christian Bros. is uprooting plum orchards in order to plant vines. St. Helena's Louis M. Martini Co. stepped up production by one-fourth last year. "Like most of the family wineries, we are taking out just enough money to live on and plowing the rest back into the business," says Louis P. Martini, son of the founder. "We have never been more successful--or felt poorer."

The expansion has been reinforced by the nation's rising thirst for wines, especially, say wine merchants, among young adults who reject the martini-zonked image of their parents. U.S. wine consumption has increased by 60% since 1960, five times as fast as population growth. Sales gained 10% in 1969 and another 13% last year, to 265 million gallons. Wine makers are particularly heartened because Americans have taken to drinking wine with meals. For the first time since Prohibition, table wines in 1969 outsold sweet wines such as sherry, port and muscatel in the U.S. California produces 75% of the wine consumed in the nation and 85% of the U.S. output. Grapes have become the state's largest cash crop (ahead of tomatoes and cotton), and the price of land in choice viticultural areas has doubled in the past five years.

Riches of Research. Prohibition, of course, ruined California's once thriving wine industry, and growers suffered another calamitous setback during World War II. To maintain sales and profits in those whisky-short years, big distillers bought up major wineries and their large inventories. To get scarce liquor, dealers thereafter were forced to accept unwanted stocks of wine, which they left to deteriorate along with the growers' reputations.

The industry owes its comeback in great part to diligent efforts to improve both its technology--now the world's most advanced--and the quality of the product. Family-owned E. & J. Gallo Winery, which produces a third of the state's output, has 60 staff oenologists working to upgrade its wines. Edmund Mirassou, co-owner of Mirassou Vineyards, is experimenting with a harvester that crushes and cools simultaneously, thus preserving the grapes' fruity bouquet. Many European vintners now send their sons to the Davis campus of the University of California. There oenologists have developed several popular new strains of grape and found a way to heat-treat vines to make them virus resistant, thus doubling the yield per acre.

Many smaller wineries have successfully concentrated on choice wines like Pinot Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. The Cabernet Sauvignon made by Joe Heitz in St. Helena sells for up to $11.50 a bottle, and Heitz cannot keep up with demand. Jack Davies, who gave up a vice presidency at a Los Angeles metals firm to revive the defunct Schramsberg Vineyards near Calistoga, gets as much as $8.50 a bottle for his premium champagne. A visiting British wine expert, Hugh Johnson, found himself amazed last fall. "California is making wine as good as the wine of France," he wrote in Gourmet. "At the peaks not quite so good, but on the average maybe better." Executives of San Benito's Almaden Vineyards prize a more subtle compliment: recently Louis Latour, the famed French wine maker, flew over for a firsthand inspection of their whole operation.

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